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A Fishwatcher's Guide to Life, the Ocean and Everything
by Helen Scales
An inspirational and wide-ranging look at fish, in all their abundant diversity.
There's something about fish that leaves a cold, slimy whiff in many people's minds. Either that, or fish are simply "food"; catching fish to eat is so deeply ingrained that we fish for fish, but we don't pigeon a pigeon or deer a deer. It's difficult to think of fish as wild, living things, partly because those chunks of white meat on our plates are almost impossible to connect to animate, living, breathing creatures.
Wild fish hover in seas, rivers and lakes, out of sight and out of mind. But from the very first time Helen Scales immersed herself into their liquid world, she realized that fish are beautiful, mesmerizing, complex and exciting. The moment she sank down to eyeball a wild trout - the fish poised in front of her, expertly occupying the three-dimensional space in a way that she could only dream of imitating - sparked the ichthyologist within, and set in motion years of study and exploration in the fishes' unseen domain as she became a devoted fish-watcher.
In this book, Scales shares the secrets of fish, unhitching them from their reputation as cold, unknowable beasts and reinventing them as clever, emotional, singing, thoughtful creatures, and challenging readers to rethink these animals. She takes readers on an underwater journey to watch these creatures going about the hidden but glorious business of being a fish. Their way of life is radically different from our own, in part because they inhabit a buoyant, sticky fluid in which light, heat, gases and sound behave in odd ways. They've evolved many tactics to overcome these challenges, to become megastars of the life sun-aquatic. In doing so, these extraordinary animals tell us so much about the oceans and life itself. Our relationship with these scaly creatures goes much deeper than predator versus prey. Fish leave their mark on the human world.
As well as being a rich and entertaining read, this book will inspire readers to think again about these animals, and the seas, and to go out and appreciate the wildness and wonders of fish, whether through the glass walls of an aquarium or, better still, by gazing into the fishes' wild world and swimming through it.
BookBrowse Review
"There are 30,000 species of fish, making them 'by far the most abundant and also the most diverse of the vertebrates.' Ninety-six percent are teleosts, the most recent branch to split off the evolutionary tree, characterized by full backbones and stiff tails. This book tells you everything you could ever want to know about fish: their use of colorful markings as camouflage; their reliance on bioluminescence, electricity and/or venom; what they eat; how they breathe; what extinct/fossil fish tell us about what fish used to be like; and so on. Evidence has emerged that fish can feel pain and exhibit signs of intelligence like learning and cooperative predation. We have also given them fantastic names, like Picasso Triggerfish and Sarcastic Fringeheads.
Unfortunately, at times (especially in Chapter 2) the book seems like nothing more than a list of facts: 'here's an interesting fish,' 'here's another interesting fish,' etc. Scales, an English marine biologist, inserts occasional snippets of autobiographical material about her travels and dives, but these feel out of place and insufficient. The same goes for the brief introductions to other figures from the history of fish research, like Robert Guppy (for whom guppies are indeed named) and Eugenie Clark, a Japanese-American shark and pufferfish researcher. However, I enjoyed the one- or two-page retellings of myths about fish interspersed with the scientific chapters, including the earliest version of the Cinderella story from ninth-century China.
I finished reading Scales's Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells earlier this year, and was a bit disappointed with this new book by comparison. Her book on shells is better suited to a general reader and more successfully conveys the delightful strangeness of sea life while incorporating information on its cultural relevance and relationship with humans. At a time when oceans are in crisis, I expected the author to be much more outspoken about the dangers of pollution and overfishing. Her passion for fish is undeniable, but readers should have a considerable preexisting interest in marine life before deciding to join her for this exhaustive survey." - Rebecca Foster
Other Reviews
"Starred Review. Popular science books don't get much better than this accessible and eye-opening look at fish by marine biologist Scales." - Publishers Weekly
"The author has a canny approach to bringing fish to life on the page ... Entertaining reading for anyone interested in the captivating underworld realm of fish." - Kirkus
"Eye of the Shoal is a book brimming with wonders. Shimmering colors, otherworldly abilities, and compelling dramas flood every page...Whether you snorkel or scuba, whether you meet fish in a tank or on TV, this book is new portal to see our blue planet with new eyes, one that will make you love our world and its creatures all the more." - Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus
"Eye of the Shoal is like a beautiful glass bottomed boat that reveals this mysterious realm with joyful passion and perfect clarity. You couldn't have a more knowledgeable guide on board than Helen." - Dallas Campbell, science broadcaster and author
"Eye of the Shoal is an absorbing account of the least understood area of our planet. Helen brings the depths to life, not only with wondrous accounts from her extensive travels, but also by introducing us to some magnificently improbable characters (both human and piscine), and by astonishing us with mind-blowing facts on every page." - James Harkin, QI's Head Elf and presenter on the award-winning podcast No Such Thing as a Fish
"This fantastic and timely book will change your perspective on your pet goldfish, a fishmonger's window display, a darting flash of silver glimpsed from a boat and the colourful world of a coral reef. A must-read for anyone interested in life on Earth." - Helen Czerski, physicist, oceanographer and author of Storm in a Teacup
"If you already love fish wherever they swim, you'll be astonished by so many new discoveries in these pages. If you don't love fish – you surely will." - Carl Safina, author of The View From Lazy Point, and Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel
This information about Eye of the Shoal was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Dr Helen Scales is a marine biologist, writer and broadcaster. She is author of many books about the ocean including the Guardian bestseller Spirals in Time, New York Times top summer read The Brilliant Abyss and the global bestselling children's picturebook What a Shell Can Tell. Her work has been adapted for screen and stage, and translated into 15 languages. She is a regular writer for National Geographic Magazine and the Guardian where she writes a long-standing series on ocean discoveries. She teaches at Cambridge University and is a storytelling ambassador for the Save Our Seas Foundation. Helen divides her time between Cambridge, England, and the wild Atlantic coast of France.
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